


scarred by this daylight

by bene_elim



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Holding Hands, Kisses, Lurelin Village, Post-Breath of the Wild, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), Sunsets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28159806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bene_elim/pseuds/bene_elim
Summary: A quiet day leads to an evening discovery for Link and Zelda; maybe they'll discover more than just ancient ruins.-"The fingertip-touch turned into two fingertips, then three, then four, until finally his whole hand encircled her wrist. He was gazing at her while she gazed at where they were joined, the light falling so softly now it was a mere whisper, and yet still burning, burning, highlighting their skin like a bangle of gold. The true monument."
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19
Collections: LoZ Writers' New Year Exchange 2021





	scarred by this daylight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrSteggy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrSteggy/gifts).



> this is for DrSteggy in the loz writers new year's exchange!! thank you to sun for hosting it, and also for betaing my work!! 
> 
> i would like to firstly apologise that this is on the short side! and i would also like to say that it was a lot of fun to write. descriptions of sunlight and the sky are my absolute bread and butter, so this was a complete and utter joy - thank you steggy for the prompts!!! i hope ive done them justice!! 
> 
> and because this is me, the title is once again from a harold pinter poem: _daylight_ , 1956. i would like to take a moment to give you the first two lines because i think that theyre incredibly beautiful, and i would have named this piece the full second line if it was relevant (which it wasn't): _i have thrown a handful of petals on your breasts. // scarred by this daylight you lie petalstruck._
> 
> and now, it is time for me to stop talking.

With heavy limbs and sun-warmed skin, Link rose. Rosy dawn had come and gone; her golden sandals had left their gilded trails across the sky like rose petals strewn across the ground after a windy afternoon. He got out of bed, stretching, trailing the sheets along the floor – and promptly saw that Zelda was not in the bed next to his. He panicked. Where was she? What if something had happened to her? What if she was hurt?

The sands beneath his feet were warm as he stepped out of the inn. He stood for a moment, despite his worry, to appreciate the slow molasses of the sun on his skin. Then he looked around the beach, and noticed Zelda perched on the rocks straight ahead. His panic dissipated. Instead, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of warmth, of contentment, one that had nothing to do with the sun above, for he was sure he’d still feel so warm even standing in a thunderstorm on the Thundra Plateau.

“Good morning, Link!” Zelda called. She was holding the Sheikah Slate, gazing intently at its screen as though it might hold the answers to the universe’s mysteries within its depths. He wandered over to her.

“Lurelin seems to be as unaffected by the Calamity as Hateno. Well, that’s good! I know we arrived late last night, but looking around, I can say that there’s not too much to survey here. It seems completely intact.”

Link agreed. Lurelin had always been a very small community, content to co-exist among the rocks and palm trees that they called home. Isolated as they were, the villagers made their livelihoods by tourism and the fishing trade. It made for a quiet life, but a peaceful one, easy and uninterrupted by the bigger city problems that plagued places like Castle Town or Hateno. The people were joyful and friendly, the atmosphere that of a place that hadn’t suffered through a catastrophic event only a century prior. And a century was not long at all; it felt so, sometimes, when he thought about how long he had slept, but in the grand scheme of history… one hundred years was so very little.

_ Shall we move on, then?  _ Link signed. He was slightly disappointed. The journey hadn’t been short, and he was tired; he felt the need to rest somewhere for a bit.

“Well,” Zelda said, seemingly sensing this, “we trekked all the way here, perhaps we could afford a small break. Afterall, Gerudo Town isn’t going anywhere!”

She was beaming. It was radiant. Link wondered whether he’d ever seen her so happy, and then wondered at the simplicity of it.

-

It had been a long time since Link had got to truly relax. During his quest to save Zelda, he had often taken a day or two here and there to rest and recharge - he knew the importance of not burning out, but the task ahead of him always lingered on his horizon. In contrast, this time in Lurelin with Zelda seemed endless, like walking through syrup: slow and sticky and sweet. An endless summer haze. An endless afternoon.

An endless evening. It felt like the sun had been setting over and over and over again, the sky a canopy of endless pinks, purples, golden blues. Hues the likes of which Link had never seen before; colours for which one could cry. Zelda stood strong among them, blazed in fiery silhouette, her hair a molten gold and haloing her like a resplendent aura.

_ Let me show you something _ , Link signed, unwilling to take his eyes off of her but sure that this was something she would like to see.

“Is it better than this sunset? Because this sunset is spectacular and whatever it is should wait,” Zelda whined.

_ You’ll want to see this, I promise,  _ Link signed, and knew that Zelda would listen. She would have listened anyway, because Link was not one to waste her time, but she also knew that when Link promised something, he did not do so lightly. A promise from Link was one to cherish.

“Alright, what is it?”

_ Come. _

__

So, Link guided her away from Lurelin, away from the torches and the huts, away from the quiet murmur of villagers and the giggling of children. He guided her up an incline, further and further still from the village, until finally they descended downwards again.

“Oh, Link,” Zelda wondered as she saw the shrine, the pedestals, the stone monument. Already in the gloaming, the luminous stone in the monument was starting to faintly glow. The sun was setting truly now, no longer playing with the whisps of clouds and turning the sky a soup of startling colour. It was just touching, sleeping, settling on the horizon like a head resting on folded arms. The sky itself was slipping from lilac to indigo, rose to fuchsia, peach to sun dust gold. Sprinkles of light danced like playful fairies on the surface of the sea fifty paces away.

“Oh, Link,” Zelda said again, still studying at the monument as though she’d never seen such a thing before – and perhaps she hadn’t, for Link hadn’t either before he had encountered this one. “It’s a marvel, isn’t it? Have you ever seen anything like it? I wonder how old it must be… do you know what it says?”

_ There used to be a man here from the village, but he seems to have left now. He read it. It told us that we had to each kneel on one of these pedestals – and when we did, the shrine appeared.  _ Link signed.

“How fascinating! It must be at least ten thousand years old, then, probably Sheikah…”

She walked around it, taking in every detail, wondering. Link wondered at her.

Sometimes, just sometimes, there was this feeling of absolute warmth that overtook every corner of his bold beating heart. It would spread like a little flame, a raging forest fire that crawled from his heart into his lungs, up his oesophagus, to the back of his throat. He was overcome with the sensation of being prickled, licked, soothed and yet burned by this imaginary fire. It only happened sometimes, when he watched Zelda very intently. He wondered at it, just as he wondered at her.

(It felt, he thought, like the current of electricity that would pass through him when he used Urbosa’s Fury: tingly, powerful, charged. It felt, he thought, like the sensation of soaring that he got every time he used Revali’s Gale: freeing, powerful, liberating. It felt, he thought, like the protection of Daruk: safe, powerful, impenetrable. It felt, he thought, like the feeling of being healed by Mipha’s Grace: warm, powerful, loving.

Loving.

Loving.)

Like discovering a memory that had long been hidden (and he knew exactly how that felt), Link realised.

Zelda was still muttering on about the Sheikah and about the shrine and about technology. Link stopped her with a simple fingertip-touch to her wrist.

“And to think – yes, Link?”

The fingertip-touch turned into two fingertips, then three, then four, until finally his whole hand encircled her wrist. He was gazing at her while she gazed at where they were joined, the light falling so softly now it was a mere whisper, and yet still burning, burning, highlighting their skin like a bangle of gold. The true monument.

Link hesitated.

Zelda shifted closer, as though sensing his reluctance to move.

He was facing away from the sun, towards Zelda and the shrine, and she was ablaze with the dying light on her face. Dusk was truly settling in now, and yet Link had still never seen anything quite so bright, quite so radiant, quite so afire as Zelda in that moment. He leaned forward slightly, and she did the same. As the sun sunk its crown under the horizon out at sea, their lips touched.

It was softer than anything Link had ever known, like a butterfly had settled on his lips; behind his closed eyelids the colours of sunsets past played like a lightshow, fireworks to match his boldly beating heart. Boom, boom, boom – he could barely breathe for the softness of the moment, fearing he would disturb a single hair on his princess’s head. He could feel the burning of the light where their lips were joined. It was unbearably warm.

They parted. It was with little ceremony. Both of them kept their eyes closed. Their foreheads touched, as soft as their kiss; their bodies refused to separate again.

Link expected Zelda to say something, something witty or observant, to make a scientific observation of the experience. But she was as silent as the falling night.

Slowly, slowly, they parted but for their hands. Zelda sighed.

And without needing to say anything, for they both understood each other intrinsically, they made their way back to Lurelin, still hand in hand. The monument would be there to explore more tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed it!!


End file.
